Chapter seven presents the views of a prominent leader of the Mustaʿlī Ṭayyibī branch of the Ismaʿili community, al-Dāʿī ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Walīd (d. 612/1215). Ibn al-Walīd was a prolific writer who authored several works on philosophy, theology, poetry, and commentary on the Qurʾān. He concisely explains key Islamic doctrines (monotheism, prophethood, the Hereafter, etc.) according to the Mustaʿlī Ṭayyibī tradition in his theological work, The Crown of Doctrines and the Mine of Instructive Points (Tāj al-ʿaqāʾid wa-maʿdin al-fawāʾid). The doctrines he supports in his chapter on the imamate largely correspond with those that appear in Twelver Shiʿi literature. He argues against the right of members of the community to choose their imams and endorses the need for their appointment by means of divine designation (naṣṣ). He believes in the perpetual necessity of the office and asserts that the nonexistence of a divinely designated imam is impossible; the imam is God’s living proof (ḥujja). The Ismaʿilis maintained that God’s proof played an essential role in humans’ acquisition of any knowledge relating to God or matters pertaining to religion that God desired humanity to know.

Chapter three presents the views of the prominent Zaydī scholar al-Nāṭiq bi-’l-Ḥaqq Abū Ṭālib al-Hārūnī (d. 424/1033) in his Theoretical Underpinning of the Imamate (al-Diʿāma fi tathbīt al-imāma). Al-Nāṭiq draws on key Muʿtazili concepts and technical terms to propound a comprehensive argument in defence of the Zaydi conception of the imamate while refuting the doctrines of his Muʿtazili, Sunni, and Twelver Shiʿi peers. Against the Twelvers, al-Nāṭiq sought to refute three assumptions: the rational necessity of the imamate, the necessity of infallibility, and the necessity of divine designation (naṣṣ). He was intimately familiar with Twelver doctrines because his father and larger family identified as Twelvers. Al-Nāṭiq’s Theoretical Underpinning became as a seminal work on the Zaydi imamate.

This chapter assesses three tenth-eleventh century attempts to define Sunnism in the wake of Abu Hanifa’s complete integration into medieval Sunni orthodoxy. I explore the role of the state, Sunni traditionalist scholars, and an emboldened Hanafi community in Khurasan and Transoxiana.

This chapter argues that Masānīd works, defending Abu Hanifa’s expertise as a scholar of hadith, constitute the second major form of writing that was integral to the rehabilitation of Abu Hanifa among the broader Sunni community. It provides for the first time a detailed account of this genre, examining unpublished manuscript sources, to show that members of other schools of law, as well as Hanafis, began to compose works defending Abu Hanifa’s orthodoxy.

The examples of political advice contained in this anthology, written across terrain that stretched from Egypt to Central Asia, date from the first half of the tenth century to the first half of the twelfth century (roughly, the Islamic Early Middle Period). The mirror-writers were both formed by and responded to the conditions in which they lived. This second chapter presents an overview of political and intellectual developments in western Asia in the Early Middle Period. It begins with a general, thematic discussion of the processes of historical change taking place in the region in the tenth to twelfth centuries, and proceeds to offer a narrative history of the major polities of the period (Samanids, Karakhanids, Buyids, Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Fatimids). It locates each mirror and mirror-writer within their specific contexts and points to interconnections among them across this historical-geographical canvas.

Chapter 4 provides an overview of the history and development of the Shiʿites. It defines the Shiʿa as those who elevate devotion and personal allegiance to the Prophet and his family as the most crucial element and sign of submission to God. This distinguishes Shiʿism from what is called ʿAlīd loyalism, which is devotion to the Prophet and his family that is widespread among Muslims. After reviewing the issues that led to the formation of the Shiʿites, the chapter traces the militant ghulāt movements of the early period, the Zaydīs and the Alevi and ʿAlawī movements. It then moves to consider the quietist Shiʿa, discussing the Imāmī movement before moving on to the groups that splintered off from it: both the “Twelver” (Ithnā-ʿAsharī) and Ismāʿīlī Shiʿite movements.

The ʿAshura protests of 2009 also warrant their own chapter because of the profound meaning with which history infused them. The chapter presents a case study of post-Islamism in the person of Ayatollah Montazeri, who was originally an architect of the Islamic system but had become one of its severest critics. After a period of trial and error, the goal of the post-Islamist trend had become to save Islam from the state by fusing it with plurality and rights instead of dogmatism and duties. Montazeri died in December 2009—six months after the initial uprising—by which time repression by the state had either radicalized protesters or suppressed more moderate voices. The seventh day of mourning for his death fell on ‘Ashura 2009, and the ensuing day of action fused the two events, drawing on both the Iranian Revolution and wider Islamic history to imbue the protests with particular meaning.